I watched a documentary on JK Rowling and the year she spent finishing the final book in the Harry Potter series and experiencing the release of the fastest selling book in history. Nothing earth-shattering, but it was still interesting to hear some of her insights. After all, she’s one of the most successful and beloved authors ever and yet she still expressed many of the same concerns as my very own author buddies.
I took notes and, while I won’t take time gathering them into any sort of thought-out essay right now, I did want to share what I wrote down. Hope you find these helpful:
-When asked what quality defined her Rowling said that, above all, she’s a “trier.”
-Jo was drafting the final book. She was typing and periodically checking her notes. She got to a part and she looked up and started giggling. She explained that she wrote in the margin, “This will take serious planning.” She cursed and said she had no idea what she meant but that she was certainly right!
-To finish the final chapters Jo locked herself in a hotel room. When she finished editing those chapters there was an awkward pause like she didn’t know what to do next. She just said it was done and shrugged. It was quite unceremonious.
-Right after she completed the series she told the interviewer candidly: “Some people will loathe it. That’s as it should be. For some people to love it, others must loathe it…so much expectation from the hardcore fans.” Despite this, she said that she was really, really happy with it. She liked it and admitted that she doesn’t always feel that way about her writing.
-The narrator of the documentary began commenting on the manuscript’s journey after completion. He remarked, “The process all seems so normal,” then proceeds to explain how the manuscript is printed out, taken in person to Jo’s agent Christopher Little in London. There was then a handover at Heathrow airport in a locked suitcase…ummm…what does this narrator thinks normally happens with books??
-Jo says she wished more than anything to be published and more than anything to be a writer. But it never occurred to her in a million years people would search her trash or try to interview her oldest friends or her scrutinize her children.
-At the film premiere of Order of the Phoenix she talks about how she’s expected to be like a film star but she’s a writer. Some of it’s fun and some of it’s horrible. Fun to talk to people who have read the books. Difficult to do the stagey stuff. She’s not very good at it and that doesn’t make her a better person because she’s not good at that. It’s just that people expect her to be visibly enjoying herself and sometimes she comes off as looking miserable.
-When she gets stressed, she detaches and only trusts one person, herself. Everyone else gets locked out and she has to do everything herself. I wonder if she has crit partners, etc. Probably just her agent at this point, right?
-She has trouble dealing with the level of expectation but ultimately decided it’s the best she could do and that’s how she planned it to end all along, so it was going to have to be good enough.
-At the book’s release party: “Doesn’t really matter if I get a bit drunk and disorderly; I finished the book.”
-She chose the ending because to her, personally, the most courageous thing a person could do was to climb back to normality. It’s just harder to rebuild, she says, than to destroy. ***SPOILER*** Would have been a neater ending to kill him, but it would have been a betrayal. He was her hero and had to do the most heroic thing in her eyes, rebuilding post-tragedy–both on a macro- and micro-level.
-Writers always have to know more than they put in.
-As the documentary wrapped up, Jo drew a family tree for the survivors of the series. She said writing the series was like running a race, she was going too fast and couldn’t stop. That’s why she had to keep thinking about who would make up the next generation. She wants her version of who ended up with whom, etc. to be the official version because it’s her world. And even though she doesn’t want to write anymore Harry Potter, she still thinks she should have the final say on that.
-Now Hollywood comes to her. When execs came to discuss the creation of a Harry Potter theme park she said that when she is sitting in a roomful of people trying to impress her, that is when she feels the most fraudulent.
-At the time she started writing the series she had made such a mess of her life. It was stripped down. It was freeing. She wanted to write a book, so she did. What was the worst that could happen? She got rejected? Ok.
-She visited the apartment where she began Book 1. A new family lives there and in her old room she sees her published books on the shelves. She admits its a big yawn to hear because hers is such a well-worn story by this point, but it’s her life and she didn’t expect that there would be a fairytale resolution.
-She’s now writing a story she describes as a political fairytale for older children. She’s not in a hurry to publish since she’s lived 10 years with deadlines. Now no one is expecting it or knows anything about it. It’s just like writing Sorcerer’s Stone. She can just relax.
-When asked if she feels lucky she says that having the idea was lucky. She implies the rest was work.
-She feels like less of a fraud as she gets older. She’s a born trier. Still writes because she loves it and needs it. Wants to be remembered as someone that did the best she could with the talent she had.
Chandler Baker 